Twenty hours ago, Sundar Pichai, the Head of Android division at Google, revealed that the next version of the company’s mobile operating system (OS) would be called as Android KitKat. His tweet has already been retweeted more than 3.5K times at the time of writing this article.

We now have over 1 Billion Android activations and hope this guy in front of the building keeps that momentum going pic.twitter.com/V0VovgmObl

With one billion Android activations now, the new name is still a talking point especially in the tech community due to its odd pairing. Rumor was that the new OS might be called Android Key Lime Pie sorted alphabetically after its predecessors. Android 1.5 was Cupcake, 1.6 was Donut, 2.0 was Eclair, 2.2 was Froyo, 2.3 was Gingerbread, 3.0 was Honeycomb, 4.0 was Ice Cream Sandwich. And Android 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 have been called Jelly Bean.

Believing that their devices make people’s life sweet, Google decided to name the new Android version on KitKat, one of the chocolates that has been quite famous with the Android team from its early days. Android KitKat is likely to debut with the new Nexus phone in the coming months.

Though the Internet giant Google, for the first time, has partnered with a confectionery brand, owned by global FMCG giant Nestle, it is apparently a like-for-like cross-promotion deal. So there has been no monetary transaction for the deal that was confirmed within a matter of twenty four hours, as stated by John Lagerling, director of Android global partnerships while talking to BBC.

It is being said that Nestle will ship more than 50 million specially branded KitKat bars in 19 countries including Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Dubai, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, to mark the release of Android KitKat. (I’m really excited to try one of these being an Android fan.)

The packs will lead the consumer to the Android KitKat site that will provide them an opportunity to win prizes including a limited number of Google Nexus 7 tablets, and credits to spend in Google Play. A small number of Android robot-shaped KitKat bars will be offered as prizes in select markets. I guess these would be like the one that is standing outside the Google HQ. Right now the site is open for countries like US, Canada and South Africa. Perhaps India will have to wait.

Also, #KitKat and #Android have been dominating the India Twitter trends since the start of the day. And as I write #Android stands at the top of the top ten list.

Update:Topsy, the social search and analytics company based in CA, has provided some more insights on both the hashtags. In last twenty four hours – #Android was mentioned 943K times with Kitkat being talked on Twitter for 13K times, resulting into an overall activity of 956K tweets and leading to an exposure of 349,340,613. The below screen grab shows the wave of conversations on Twitter (Click on the image for a bigger view.)

#Android dominated the conversations with more than 53K positive conversations on the platform. Tweeps from US (286K) dominated the conversations followed by Russia (281), Germany (87K), etc. India contributed an estimated more than 4K tweets resulting 0.36% of activity on the network.

Interestingly, a tweet from Nokia Deutschland has got more than a thousand retweets and is still the most talked about tweet with respect to the two hashtags.

I like the new name and quite agree to KitKat “chief breaks officer” Christopher Catlin saying that Google got the perfect confectionery right the first time. Find out why KitKat 4.4 is “the best ever thing to happen to confectionery” in the video embedded below. Planned dig on Apple?